


The Invisible War

by churb



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: And all that jazz, Character Study, F/F, Pearl thinks about cry for help, and garnet and rose, i guess, spoilers for stevebomb 3, written for thecrystalgems.com secret summer exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4382705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churb/pseuds/churb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Secret Summer Exchange on thecrystalgems.com.</p>
<p>Pearl enjoys being Sardonyx.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invisible War

**Author's Note:**

> soo this was written for http://thecrystalgems.com/contests/639-crystal-gems-secret-summer-exchange.html 
> 
> my buddy was fredius and this was supposed to be pearlnet but oh dear

Pearl enjoys being Sardonyx.  
  
In all technicality she’s not exactly built for fusion. Homeworld generally frowned upon such (but did they when she was still there? She’s not entirely sure) and even if they didn’t it certainly wouldn’t be part of the duties of a lowly Pearl such as herself. She’s nothing more than a maintenance drone. It wouldn’t make much sense.  
  
She doesn’t think it’s the thrill of this, as much, that makes her enjoy fusion so much. She’s not quite as fond of forming Opal; no offense to poor Amethyst, of course, and it’s not that Opal is necessarily bad or that Pearl dislikes sharing her consciousness with this particular teammate. Amethyst could put it down to Pearl hating her all she wanted, but that was never the case; and in fact this insecurity that Amethyst nurses about herself is the exact problem.  
  
The reason fusion appeals to Pearl is because she’s stuck in some sort of weird loop of self loathing where (or maybe caused by) she was plucked out randomly from a group (they’d marked her as defective, she doesn’t even recall why) by someone who thought she might make a good knight and then proceeded to fight in an awful, terrible war and if Pearl had any handle on herself or an accurate reading of her own personality she would consider two things; the first being that she had cripplingly awful self esteem issues, and the second being that she had somewhat of a complex with authority.  
  
Pearl hadn’t paid much attention to Garnet until Rose died.  
  
No, that was a lie on many counts. The first being that Rose wasn’t _dead_ (a small part of her tells her that when (if?) Steven eventually dies, Rose will regenerate, but she hates even the thought of losing Steven so she never really thinks about it) and the second being that the sentence implied that she just didn’t take any notice of Garnet. That the two just ignored each other. And that really was not the case.  
  
Well. Pearl had never ignored Garnet, at least.  
  
The fact was that when Rose died or poofed out of existence or whatever you wanted to call it, Garnet had been elected as the leader in a weird unspoken conventional sort of way. And while Pearl had spent most of her life thus far listening to Rose and idolising Rose (adoring her, generally needing her company) now that there was, suddenly, no Rose, Pearl was put in an awkward and uncomfortable position of having nobody to listen to at all. Which, obviously, conflicted massively with the whole awkward authority complex that she had, which meant that she automatically had to default to the next best option.  
  
Which might have been slightly unreasonable. It might have been slightly unfair to poor Garnet, who until recently had never been put on such an unreachable pedestal. Pearl wonders sometimes, after everything, whether it was unfair of her. She’s not really sure if she could say she could have helped it.  
  
The fact was that Garnet was a physical manifestation of, well. Love. And not even the sort of mindless, idealistic adoration that Pearl had felt for Rose Quartz, the sort where her vision was clouded and there wasn’t anything else and it’s only now that she’s realising, slowly, that the gem had _flaws_. The love that Garnet was comprised of, as a permanent fusion (the idea of which frankly scared Pearl to death, as much as she’d never admit it) was a healthy sort of love. It made her perfect, in a way. She was always just so kept together and focused as a person. Garnet had no problems with her self esteem. Garnet had no problems with herself at all, really, because every fiber of her being loved herself and reinforced the idea that she was perfect and likable and just generally A+ in every way possible. Ruby and Sapphire loved each other, and as such, Garnet loved herself, as much as she could and as much as they could.  
  
And Pearl had no idea how she did it.  
  
She wouldn’t say she wanted to be Sardonyx all the time. As previously stated, permanent fusion kind of scares her. She doesn’t think of Garnet as Ruby and Sapphire, she thinks of them as Garnet, even forgetting the latter two existed most of the time. She feels somewhat apprehensive about the idea of losing her own identity like that, and sometimes, when she sleeps (she sleeps more often now than she did before; Steven likes people keeping him company and she has nothing else to do, most nights) she dreams of Malachite and wonders how anyone could possibly deserve that. Which is completely incomparable to Garnet, of course, as hers is a personal choice and she was very happy like that, but it ties into the same sort of inexplicable fear of losing herself because Pearl isn’t entirely sure what she is to begin with.  
  
She wouldn’t say she wanted to be Sardonyx all the time. Just enough to make it better, on the days when it wasn’t.  
  
When Rose was alive and it got too much, she used to form Rainbow Quartz. Or maybe the more fitting term would be “she used to bury herself in a blanket pile in her room and cry for centuries, probably, until Rose pulled her out and formed Rainbow Quartz”. And Rainbow Quartz would just sit there with a blanket that probably got dragged out with her and just wait until the internal emotional turmoil had calmed a little before the two of them unfused and Pearl felt a little bit better about herself. She doesn’t know how Rose did it either; she was just as together and self loving as Garnet was and she wasn’t even a fusion.  
  
(Maybe she was just arrogant. Maybe Pearl shouldn’t think these things about Rose.)  
  
(Maybe she’s had enough.)  
  
She supposes, really, it’s sort of the same reason Sugilite lost herself. Amethyst also had her fair share of problems, though Pearl isn’t entirely sure why. She knows _why_ , of course, some sort of recurring theme about Amethyst originating from the Kindergarten and feeling terrible about it because of the other terrible things the Kindergarten was used for. Pearl had tried to reassure her before but Amethyst never wanted to listen to her these days.  
  
When you have those problems, when you’re at the point where you hate yourself that much, when it genuinely hurts because you can’t get the demons out of your head and it feels like an awful stabbing pain in the pit of your stomach (and Pearl knows this feeling better than she should) having someone who loves themself, who’s just the total opposite of how you’re feeling right now, so kept together and perfect, fusing with them feels like all of their positive emotions, all of their confidence, just surrounds all of your negative thoughts and eases it out of your body and it’s honestly such a boost. The five seconds after Pearl stops being Sardonyx, before it all comes back, are the best she could ever feel. And again, while she wouldn’t want to be Sardonyx forever, she wants to feel like that all the time. She wants to feel that confident and secure in herself…all the time.  
  
Which is hard because she’s programmed to follow orders and consider herself worthless.  
  
_“Did Rose make you feel like you were nothing?”  
  
“Rose made me feel like I was everything.”_  
  
Rose made her feel like she was worthless and nothing and fit only to throw herself in front of danger, to shatter and reform again and again, to mindlessly slay anyone who even came close to harming her self professed liege. Rose made her feel like a warrior fit only for this purpose. Rose made her feel disposable. Rose probably thought she was disposable for the first few years.  
  
But Rose also made her feel like she was everything. Rose made her feel like she was everything later, when the war was over, and she’d come into her room and sit with her and touch her hair and fuse, sometimes, and she got the general, overarching feeling of _Well done, Pearl. You did good._  
  
And it’s getting worse, now, because now when she’s alone and there are only these thoughts to keep her company, when Steven’s asleep and she’s got nothing else to think about ( _peridot malachite imminent homeworld threat I can’t do this not again shut up go away_ ) Pearl thinks about something that isn’t that and wonders if her love for Rose was love or blind adoration, a desperate need for attention, clinging to the first person that came by, how fucking pathetic.  
  
And she wonders if Rose ever loved her back.  
  
Vocalising all of this in Peridot’s destruction room (complete with constricting walls) (and hell if that didn’t sound like a tacky advertising pitch) had been difficult and she wasn’t sure how successful she was. She supposes really that Garnet was right, in a way, but it’s been going on for too long now and she can’t tell which of her opinions and thoughts are truly her own or just what she thinks other people might want her to think.  
  
But she can’t stop trying, she guesses.  
  
After the whole hellish escapade was over and Garnet could look at her again Pearl finds herself in the others’ room, sits herself down across from her, and spends an inordinately long time being silent and alternating between looking at her and the floor before she finally manages to speak.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You already said that.”   
  
It almost discourages her from saying anything else, almost convinces her to just leave, to leave it, ignore the problem and it goes away, but this is bugging her and she needs to say it.   
  
“You didn’t let me say it in Peridot’s chamber.”  
  
That makes Garnet pause, at least.  
  
“I didn’t want to die without being able to make it up to you.”  
  
“We wouldn’t have died.” And Pearl privately thinks she’s missing the point, but ignores this, moving a little closer and settling herself back down.  
  
“...I didn’t mean for it to hurt you.”  
  
Garnet doesn’t respond again.  
  
“I just want things to go back to how they were.”  
  
This time, she moves. She sits herself up and leans back on her arms a bit. It’s sort of an unspoken invitation, she knows that much from millennia of living with her, and Pearl moves close enough for Garnet to put an arm around her. The gesture isn’t overly fond. She’s still concentrating on whatever it is she’s concentrating on (internal dialogue, maybe) and it seems almost robotic in a sense. It’s part of the same cool, collected, direct front that Garnet seems to exude at every possible turn. Pearl shuffles a little closer and leans on her.  
  
It’s uncomfortable but it’s physical contact and she can only assume that it’s stage one in some sort of weird convoluted forgiveness cycle.  
  
“I don’t mean to put any sort of pressure on you. I didn’t even realise—“  
  
“It’s fine. I can handle it.”  
  
“I just feel like I need some sort of direction, or—“  
  
“This isn’t Homeworld.”  
  
That makes her stop and look up.  
  
“Nobody’s going to hurt you if you make your own decisions.”  
  
Pearl stares for a moment before looking down. “I know that.”  
  
“But do you really know that? Inside?”  
  
If Pearl were Amethyst she might joke about shit getting deep, but she chooses instead to brush off the temporary bubble of humour because now is not the time.  
  
“It’s difficult.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Pearl doesn’t ask what Rubies and Sapphires did on Homeworld. She decides she’s generated enough tension and painful feelings as it is.  
  
“…Sometimes I don’t even know if my thoughts or feelings are really even mine. Or if I’m just…too used to being lead by people.”  
  
There’s another awkward silence there.  
  
“Like Rose?”  
  
It hurts and she hates herself for nodding.  
  
“Like Rose.”  
  
She doesn’t want to hate Rose. She doesn’t hate Rose. But she can’t bear feeling like she was perfect any more. It confuses and hurts her.  
  
“Rose isn’t here, Pearl.”  
  
Rose is dead, she reminds herself again. “I kn—“  
  
“But I am.”  
  
“I know.” Pearl says, again, and she can’t help feeling glad about that.  
  
(Pearl enjoys being Sardonyx because it’s a quick fix for her problems. Pearl is well and painfully aware that it’s going to be a good while before she can be Sardonyx in a non-drastic situation again.)  
  
(Pearl is also painfully aware that problems don’t go away by ignoring them.)  
  
(She supposes they both are.)


End file.
